Jason Box

Dr. Jason Box has been investigating Greenland ice sheet sensitivity to weather and climate as part of 23 expeditions to Greenland since 1994. His time camping on the inland ice exceeds 1 year. Year 2012 brought a deeper level of insight as the scientific perspective shifts to examine the interactions ice with atmospheric and ocean systems, including the role of fire in darkening the cryosphere. As part of his academic enterprise, Box has authored or co-authored 50+ peer-reviewed publications related to Greenland cryosphere-climate interactions. Box instructed climatology courses at The Ohio State University 2003-2012. Box is now a Professor at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS). Box was a contributing author to the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007 4th assessment report. Box is also the former Chair of the Cryosphere Focus Group of the American Geophysical Union.

Just one point of their work I expand on here is the issue of declining MODIS Terra sensor sensitivity (Wang and others 2012; Lyapustin et al. (2014). First, Polashenski and others (2015) develop the MODIS albedo decline issue nicely. Now, rewinding back to early 2012, after becoming aware of Wang and others (2012) results, I evaluated whether the albedo decline was present in the completely independent Greenland Climate Network (GC-Net) data after Steffen and others (1996). In 2012, I wrote:

“Degrading MODIS instrument sensitivity identified by Wang et al. (2012) introduces the possibility that the declining albedo trends may be erroneous. To validate the MODIS albedo trends, coinciding observations from GC-Net AWS are examined. The ground truth data are situated across a range of elevations, spanning the ablation and accumulation areas. Analysis of the GC-Net data confirms declining albedo trends in the 2000–2010 period to be widespread in individual months from May–September. Trend statistics are computed where at least 7 yr of annual data are available from both GC-Net and MODIS Terra. Significance is designated here more strictly where the trend measured by the linear regression slope has a magnitude that exceeds 2 of the residuals from the regression. In 41 of 43 (95 %) of monthly cases May–September, the trend is found to be significant and decreasing (Table 1). In 10 of 14 (71 %) cases, for which both GC-Net and MOD10A1 trends are significant, the GC-Net declining trend is larger than the MOD10A1 trend. It therefore does not seem that MODIS sensor degradation is enhancing an existing trend.” – Box and others (2012)

Still, an update after 2010 is in order. Now, the evaluation through 2014 yields that there is still a real albedo decline for the southern part of the ice sheet, including places like Saddle or South Dome where surface melting is uncommon. Note how not only do both GC-Net and MODIS MOD10A1 show a decline, they share peaks and troughs. Given that the ground data having a footprint size of just a few square meters and the satellite data that have an effective footprint size of 5 x 5 km and that they pick up the same high and low years is impressive.

Wonk Alert: Still the bias is very likely a latitude-dependent. Notice how the GC-Net trend is even stronger than the MODIS trend in the far south (South Dome and Saddle). Consider that we have sunlight reflecting off of a highly reflective part (an ice sheet) of a sphereoid (the earth) that arcs more than 20 degrees north south. Snow and ice have reflectance depending strongly on viewing and illumination angles. So, the satellite data compensation for simple albedo are susceptible to amplification of small sensor degradation biases.
Let me add that the detected bias is smaller than the type of anomalies produced by for example the large July 2015 melting for NW Greenland. The red and yellow areas below are real local albedo anomalies due primarily to melting.

MODIS having a more negative trend than the ground data for the northern high and usually dry bright snow interior sites (See NASA-E, Tunu-N, Humboldt above) is also a real issue that Polashenski and others (2015) nicely report. While the bias we are looking forward to be compensated in the version 6 MODIS data (Lyapustin and othes 2014). As to the role of black carbon in Greenland’s albedo decline, I would say there is more to the story than what Polashenski and others (2015) report. Stay tuned.

Sensors in Earth orbit give us the capability to monitor vast areas, daily, in near real-time. I’ve been working with daily NASA MODIS MOD14A1 data to map seasonal fire activity since the data begin year 2000. The map below illustrates the single most active day so far in 2015 for North America with fires ravaging central western Canada and interior Alaska.

A new strongest fire season?

Through 18 July, 2015, these data indicate the cumulative radiative power of North American fires to be the highest on record in the period of observations beginning in 2000. For July, 2015 fire power is 2.5 times the sixteen summer average 2000-2015. The fire season spikes above the annual average earlier in the year than in other years.

Western Canada experienced more than 600 fires over the weekend, according to territorial authorities.

Canadian provinces and territories pool their firefighting resources in these circumstances. While the NWT has requested more backup, other provinces are perceived to have a “dire need” and are first in line.

“Saskatchewan, for instance, is undergoing a series of evacuations of communities,” said Frank Lepine, the territory’s associate director of forest management. “Manitoba is pretty close to that.

“The NWT will be receiving some single resources but no more crews at this time. [But] that may change by the end of the week.”

There are 129 fires burning in the NWT, which has experienced a total of 158 fires so far this season. The 20-year average is 66 fires for this time of year.

And the 2015 fire season is not yet over.

According to this analysis, the previous year 2014 ended by setting the annual record for cumulative fire power for North America. Year 2004 fires were concentrated around the Alaska Canada border.

Canada’s Northwest Territories are on fire. The region is experiencing its hottest, driest summer in 50 years, and wildfire activity is more than six times the 25-year average. While blazes in sparsely populated northern Canada have a minimal impact on human safety and infrastructure, they have an outsized effect on the environment: The ancient, stunted boreal forests, or taiga, ringing the Arctic Circle contain 30 percent of the world’s land-based carbon.

July 2, 2004 — A pall of smoke the size of Texas continues to blanket most of Alaska, as several dozen wildfires continue to burn out of control. More than a million acres have burned in the state. There are currently 61 active fires in the state, mostly in the eastern interior

Peter Sinclair is sitting in the cafe at the airstrip in Kangerlussuaq, the main port of entry for most folks coming in to Greenland. I believe this is the only place with daily, year round service from Europe – a single “Mothership” Airbus 330, making the run daily from Copenhagen. There’s a lot of patchy snow in the vicinity – forgot May is still pretty cold here, having come from blossom time in Scandanavia.

immediately ran into microbiologist Marek Stibal, who is already here camping not far away, taking sediment samples to flesh out the picture of biological activity on the ice.

In about 90 minutes I’ll take another hop to Ilulissat, site of a major Arctic conference next week, where I hope to catch up with a number of very active scientists. Jason Box is an organizer of the event, and we’ll join up in a few days.

My task this summer is to get as many interviews as possible, as well as shoot a lot of additional footage – and to that end, I’ll be staying in some visually stunning places – Ilulissat for one, and in a week, a place called Uummannaq.